Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) 1st Edition

by Dr. Marion Nestle (Author), Mark Bittman (Afterword), Neal Baer (Foreword)

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ISBN-13: 978-0190263430

ISBN-10: 0190263431

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Sodas are astonishing products. Little more than flavored sugar-water, these drinks cost practically nothing to produce or buy, yet have turned their makers--principally Coca-Cola and PepsiCo--into a multibillion-dollar industry with global recognition, distribution, and political power. Billed as "refreshing," "tasty," "crisp," and "the real thing," sodas also happen to be so well established to contribute to poor dental hygiene, higher calorie intake, obesity, and type-2 diabetes that the first line of defense against any of these conditions is to simply stop drinking them. Habitually drinking large volumes of soda not only harms individual health, but also burdens societies with runaway healthcare costs.

So how did products containing absurdly inexpensive ingredients become multibillion dollar industries and international brand icons, while also having a devastating impact on public health?

In Soda Politics, the 2016 James Beard Award for Writing & Literature Winner, Dr. Marion Nestle answers this question by detailing all of the ways that the soft drink industry works overtime to make drinking soda as common and accepted as drinking water, for adults and children. Dr. Nestle, a renowned food and nutrition policy expert and public health advocate, shows how sodas are principally miracles of advertising; Coca-Cola and PepsiCo spend billions of dollars each year to promote their sale to children, minorities, and low-income populations, in developing as well as industrialized nations. And once they have stimulated that demand, they leave no stone unturned to protect profits. That includes lobbying to prevent any measures that would discourage soda sales, strategically donating money to health organizations and researchers who can make the science about sodas appear confusing, and engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to create goodwill and silence critics. Soda Politics follows the money trail wherever it leads, revealing how hard Big Soda works to sell as much of their products as possible to an increasingly obese world.

But Soda Politics does more than just diagnose a problem--it encourages readers to help find solutions. From Berkeley to Mexico City and beyond, advocates are successfully countering the relentless marketing, promotion, and political protection of sugary drinks. And their actions are having an impact - for all of the hardball and softball tactics the soft drink industry employs to maintain the status quo, soda consumption has been flat or falling for years. Health advocacy campaigns are now the single greatest threat to soda companies' profits. Soda Politics provides readers with the tools they need to keep up pressure on Big Soda in order to build healthier and more sustainable food systems.

Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

2016 James Beard Award for Writing & Literature Winner

"The soda industry is a powerful economic operator. Economic power readily translates into political power. Soda Politics is exactly the kind of carefully-researched investigative reporting needed to open the eyes of the public and parliamentarians to the health hazards of what is, as the author rightly notes, essentially liquid candy in a bottle." --Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization

"Long recognized as an important and informed voice in our national and international discussions on nutrition and health, Marion Nestle has written another book that will keep us talking. With an impressive combination of scholarship and advocacy, Dr. Nestle takes an unflinching look at the soda industry, its products and the impact on health. Soda Politics deserves the attention of the public and policy makers, and should make us all think more carefully about choices we can make to improve health and well-being." --Margaret Hamburg, M.D., Former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

"Marion Nestle is one of the greatest muckrakers of our time, and what she does is vitally important-for our health, our environment, and for future generations. Here, she wages war against the soda titans with such piercing clarity and so many irrefutable truths that all other arguments crumble." --Alice Waters, Founder and Proprietor of Chez Panisse

"Comprehensive and well-written, this book will help frame a thoughtful public policy debate about nutrition and the societal impacts and costs of obesity." --Ann M. Veneman, Former US Secretary of Agriculture and Former Executive Director of UNICEF

"What happens when the food industry's most insightful critic turns her sights on soda? This razor-sharp, fun to read, plan-of-battle for one of the greatest public health fights of our time. Big soda may have all the money, but those who would enter this fray, as we all should, now have their champion." --Michael Moss, Author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

"For decades, soda companies have amassed fortunes off drinks that are making us sick. It took someone like Marion Nestle to cut through the spin and uncover the high cost of cheap sodas." --Robert Kenner, Director/Producer, Food Inc. and Merchants of Doubt

"No book in history has so completely laid bare the soda scourge that touches every corner of the world. Marion Nestle shows how this happened, its impact on human health and well-being, who the players are, and, most importantly, what might be done. This is the right book at the right time." --Dr. Kelly Brownell, Dean, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

"An outstanding manual for health educators, activists, and anyone seeking information about the soda industry and its impact on health." - Library Journal

"If you have been exhausted by the flip-flop of Brexit politics in recent weeks, Soda Politics offers a refreshing break - a great read for dietitians." -NHDmag

About the Author

Dr. Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986-88, she was senior nutrition policy advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services and managing editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health. She has been a member of the FDA Food Advisory Committee and Science Board, the USDA/DHHS Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and American Cancer Society committees that issue dietary guidelines for cancer prevention. She is also the author of Eat Drink Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics (Rodale, 2013), Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (Berkeley, 2012), Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (Berkeley, 2010), Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley, 2007), which won awards from the Association for American Publishers and the James Beard Foundation; and What to Eat (North Point, 2006), which was named one of Amazon's top ten books of 2006. You can read her blog at www.foodpolitics.com.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (October 5, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0190263431
ISBN-13: 978-0190263430
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 1.7 x 6.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #87 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Restaurant & Food
- #265 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Administration & Policy > Public Health
- #324 in Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Food Science

Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

The other cola wars

By David Wineberg TOP 500 REVIEWER on September 24, 2015

Format: Hardcover

From the woman who told The New Yorker: “The best thing Pepsi could do for worldwide obesity would be to go out of business.” comes the ultimate, complete explanation of why sodas and the firms behind them are bad, who is doing what about it, and how you can help move it all along. Marion Nestle has long been the rational, thorough and fair rapporteur of food crime. Soda Politics is a standalone compendium of her personal knowledge and direct and indirect experience in the battle to corral it.

As with tobacco, soda makers know to start ‘em young. Kids meals come with sodas by default. A child’s portion is 12 ounces –their new normal. Big Soda has been paying schools a pittance for “exclusive pouring rights”, plastering the campuses of even elementary schools with dispensing machines, posters and signs – not just for their drinks, but for their even more unhealthy snack foods. It’s the kids’ normal environment. For this, the school gets $2 per child. $4 for highschoolers. Nestle calls this an unprecedented attack on schools. Interestingly, kids who aren’t allowed sodas at school don’t then go home and guzzle them to make up the deficit. They can live without, and if we could simply substitute the default drink, everything would improve.

Despite the “voluminous, consistent and compelling research”, Big Soda maintains there is no direct link to all the new obesity and diabetes we see here, and in every nation they invade. In the USA, the amount of sugar they sell works out to 13 teaspoons for every man woman and child – per day. But then, some theaters sell a 44 ounce “medium”.

The soda companies recognize that health advocacy has become the single biggest threat to profits. And that the Big Tobacco playbook is not enough.Read more ›

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A must for those interested in public health issues

By Mark H. Pendergrast on February 19, 2016

Format: Hardcover

Marion Nestle has written a well-researched, fact-packed assessment of how soft drinks and the companies that make them have impacted our health, mostly through the obesity epidemic, which results in many life-threatening diseases, most notably type-2 diabetes. Whether the sweeteners in them come from cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, sugary soft drinks provide far too many empty calories for those who over-consume them.

No one, including Nestle, is arguing that moderate consumption is bad for you. But that isn’t the point.

You may not agree with all of her conclusions, but if you are interested in issues of public health, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Note that I am the author of the history of Coca-Cola (FOR GOD, COUNTRY AND COCA-COLA) as well as a book about disease detectives and public health (INSIDE THE OUTBREAKS), so I know something about these issues. The soft drink companies offer alternative low-calorie drinks, and they make a point of supporting laudatory exercise programs. Good. But they continue to advertise and lobby (often using front groups) for ever-greater consumption of sugar-laden beverages and to fight against taxes or regulations on them.

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Excellent

By Autamme_dot_com on October 12, 2015

Format: Hardcover

Will drinking a glass of cold, sparkling soda be soon the equivalent of smoking: you are a social pariah in the eyes of many, whilst providing a source of income for the producer and taxing government alike? You might not be able to draw a direct comparison since you are less likely to be hooked with an occasional glass of Coca-Cola, yet becoming a regular “hooked” consumer can have its side effects. There’s a whole world of soda politics that you possibly had never imagined.

This is an interesting book that looks, without recourse to hysteria or hyperbole, at the world of soda drinks, the role they play in our society and their real downside as these products contribute to poor dental hygiene, higher calorie intake, obesity and type-2 diabetes. Clearly a glass won’t harm you, but several glasses a day or more?

The author takes a forensic look at how the soda drinks industry works to get us hooked. Advertising is heavily used to make drinking soda seem normal, as normal as drinking a glass of milk or water. Would your football stadium hot dog be the same with a glass of water? What about a visit to the cinema, if you took milk with your over-priced popcorn? Carrot juice to accompany your hamburger at a fast-food joint?

Even after any health issues that can follow there is a dark side. Why would the soda drinks industry be pumping large amounts of money to lobby against changes that could impact on their bottom line? They may shout loudly about their ethical policies and corporate social responsibility, whilst shovelling money at lobbyists to head off initiatives that might stop their products being marketed towards the most vulnerable (children) in places where they gather such as schools or cinemas.

The author carefully comes out with her arguments.Read more ›

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Important Resource If You Care About Your Health

By Bud Taylor on October 7, 2015

Format: Hardcover

I read 2-3 health books a week and believe this was in the top ten that I reviewed this year. I was fortunate to be able to review a galley copy of this book prior to publication and enjoyed it so much I read it twice. Most people understand the influence the drug industry wields via its revolving door with federal regulatory agencies. Less is known about the influence of the food manufacturers, particularly manufacturers of soft drinks.

Thanks in large part, to activists like Marian Nestle there has been a dramatic reduction in soda sales the past few years. Many people are finally waking up to the dangers they pose. While the book reviews some of the medical complications from the use of soda its primary focus is on the pernicious tactics that the soda industry uses to boost its sales. Hence the title of the book. They are absolute masters at using astonishingly comprehensive strategies No community group is too small to receive a gran from the Coke or Pepsi Foundations. No city contemplating a soda tax is too small or too poor to be the target of a massive and lavishly funded counter-offensive.

She covers in marvelous detail how the soda industry mirrors the same tactics and strategies used by the cigarette companies to deflect attention from the hazards of smoking. For example one of their recent efforts is to focus on |global balance" and seek to convince the public that it is perfectly healthy to consume soda as long as you have enough exercise. She also details the devious methods they use to circumvent the restrictions on advertising their products to children.
However, this is not a book to merely identify the problem. Dr.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Brilliant study on a central emerging policy issue

Pathbreaking description of the costs of Big Soda, and suggestions for future reform, such as sin taxes.

Published 2 months ago by Jeff Thomas

This book will spur you to action!

This book helped me develop strategy for gaining support from administration for ridding our health care facility of sugary beverages.

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Interesting book.

Published 3 months ago by Donna Music

Tools to take action

Well researched book highlighting everything from the nature of the beverage industry to the industry tricks used keep making money off our country's waistline. Read more

Published 4 months ago by John Lachiewicz

Four Stars

Excellent read

Published 5 months ago by beckibell

A very important book for those wishing to stay healthy

An excellent eye-opener that delves into how the Big Corporates like the Coca-Cola company "manage" the marketing of their products. Read more

Published 5 months ago by MGV

Three Stars

enjoyed for what it was - author wasn't unbiased, and a little petulant.

Published 5 months ago by Jaybird

If this book started out by acknowledging consumer choice and...

Full disclosure, I spent a significant portion of my adult life in and around the soft drink industry, in marketing, no less. Read more

Published 5 months ago by John Milone

Engrossing, Challenging Read

It's an old story. A product, like tobacco, is on the market and causes harm. Corporate entities, those that make these harmful products, deny, fight, threaten, buy-off, pay-off,... Read more

Published 13 months ago by KarenRachel

Absolute garbage. Irresponsible sensationalism based on faulty...

Absolute garbage. Irresponsible sensationalism based on faulty "science" and the twisting of "facts". Read more

Published 13 months ago by Zdaddy

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